More thoughts from the road

Writing from Glenallen now. Tired. Last night's hotel was so hot that I slept poorly and it's caught up with me. But it's still good. I hit Chitina on the way up from Valdez. Was aiming for McCarthy and Kennicott, but between the late start this morning, the bad weather that cost me even more time in the mountains, and the 60-mile one-lane dirt road from Chitina to McCarthy (yes, they still live like that here in much of this beautiful state), I didn't see me making it there and back out before dark, especially since the only way from McCarthy to Kennicott is a five mile hike each way. And today it would have been a ten-mile round-trip in freezing rain, coupled with a long drive-out on a dark, unfamiliar moose-infested road. So I reluctantly took a pass on Kennicott. But I'll be back when I've got more time.

Meanwhile, I've been talking to lots of people here and the Palin issue keeps coming up. It seems like this state is divided into two camps: Palin-lovers and Palin-haters, with almost no one in between. The Palin-haters seem to be almost universally transplants from other places, usually not too long ago. Those who love her and consider her a native daughter done well are the people who've lived here their whole lives, and most of them aren't too fond of the liberals who moved here from down below, either permanently or just to go to school for a few years, who now insist on having a say in the way that Alaska is run. And in a state with such a small population, I can see their point. Enough outsiders with voting rights can change things for everyone even as many of those outsiders leave and go back to the lower 48 as many of them will. The love/hate for Palin here seems to spring from and represent that divide and it's been pretty uniform everywhere that I've inquired. Palin lovers include born and bred Alaskans and members of the military, and Palin-haters are mostly college kids, transient hippies, and people who moved up recently from places like New Hampshire, Michigan and California and now want to make Alaska more like the high-tax, big-government places that they fled from.

Anyway, enough of that. I need to go find tonight's lodgings. Still haven't seen any moose this time out but there were bald eagles in abundance this morning as I was coming out of Valdez. The snow's coming, too. There was none yesterday when I crossed Thompson Pass into Valdez. This morning there was a solid dusting on the pass and surrounding mountain tops. Everyone I've talked to says that it's coming, it's coming to stay for a while, and it's coming soon.

On the home news side, Murphy is reportedly doing quite well back at the Lair, and the special election for Governor just went to the Democrats. No surprise there, but I'm ready to give up on the people of that state. every time you give them opportunities for lower taxes, smaller government and the chance to make the state over into someplace that's actually pro-business, they run to the polls and vote for a big tax-the-rich welfare-state Dem and then sit around and wonder why no employers are rushing to move into that state to give them decent jobs.

Heck with them. If I can find a good job up here, me and Murphy are heading north for good.

Neener, neener!

Hey, you remember David Kernell, that punk kid who hacked Governor Palin's e-mail account during the 2008 presidential elections and bragged about it until he got caught? If you recall, he was the sheltered and spoiled son of Tennessee State Representative Mike Kernell, a Democrat, of course.

Well after being convicted of a felony out of that case, he caught a break in the form of liberal U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips, who sentenced him to an incredibly lenient one day less than a year in prison. The judge's goal was obviously to keep young David out of the prison system (because a sentence of more than a year would mandate incarceration) and in that vein, he also recommended that the federal Bureau of Prisons send him to a half-way house so that he could keep going to school and doing what other non-incarcerated college kids do.

However, the Bureau of Prisons declined, sending him to a real albeit minimum-security facility instead. In a rare written explanation, BOP Chief Jose Santana told the judge that he could not do so because the half-way houses are set up to help recidivism-prone inmates with limited social or job skills transition back into society, and that it would be wrong to deny one of these needy inmates that help just to give this coddled kid an easy ride. Santana's letter said, in relevant part:

“Our agency contracts (halfway house) bed space for inmates who have a greater need … such as those with limited job skills/resources and family and community support,” Santana wrote. “Mr. Kernell has attended three years of college and has the support of his family.”

The bureau instead sent Kernell, 22, to a minimum-security facility in Ashland, Ky.

So despite the best efforts of his dad's influential network of friends and connections--a network which apparently includes a district judge named Phillips, little David's going to actually pay a penalty for his efforts to disrupt and undermine a national presidential election.


I'm happy. Careful bending over for that soap, David!

A stalker whines...

By now, most of you have probably heard of Joe McGinniss. For those of you who have not, he's a left-wing "author" of crappy unauthorized biographies from Massachusetts. He's also known for his obsession with Sarah Palin. He's written yellow hit-screeds about her and harassed her at a charity dinner and is currently writing another book about her personal life. And typical of many of the left-wing moonbats out there, he apparently has absolutely no boundaries or professional integrity. I say this because he's taken his stalking to a new level--renting the house next door to the Palin family so that he can spy on them every moment of every day.

Obviously, Governor Palin was not pleased. "Knowing of his many other scathing pieces of 'journalism'... we're sure to have a doozey to look forward to with this treasure he's penning,” Palin wrote on Monday. "Wonder what kind of material he'll gather while overlooking Piper's bedroom, my little garden, and the family's swimming hole?"

And who can blame her? This guy takes "creepy" to a whole new level, and even his son says that he's romantically obsessed with her.

Now the public backlash against him and his sleazy publisher, Random House, is intensifying. Ironically, he's getting the negative attention that he's been trying to build and focus on the Palins, and shockingly, he's unhappy about it. So he's taken to crying to the Washington Post to deny claims that he's a stalker.

After radio host Mark Levin gave out the author's e-mail address, McGinniss got 5000 messages in four hours, eventually shutting down the account. Wasilla police and state troopers are keeping a watchful eye on the place, although McGinniss said no one had come to the house to threaten him on Friday. He simply didn't anticipate the scale of Palin's response.

McGinniss said he was offended by the way Palin described his presence next door. He was deeply offended by the implication, not thinly veiled in Palin's note and subsequent interview with Glenn Beck, that he would be peering in on the children.

"These little kids, I couldn't care less about them," said McGinniss. "I have my own kids and grandkids to care about. I'm just very offended by this."

Yeah, good luck with that one, stalker-boy.

McGinniss should consider himself lucky that he's only stalking a family that has the grace and the restraint of the Palins. Coming from Massachusetts, he undoubtedly relishes his role as a journalistic bully, secure in the knowledge that his fellow liberals are cowed by the fact that he has a lawyer or two on speed-dial ready to sue anyone who gives him what he's got coming. But that really only works in places like Massachusetts or California. In much of the rest of America--particularly the parts where real red-blooded Americans live and constitute the majority--people like McGinniss frequently become known by another term: Missing persons.

Creeps like Joe McGinniss risk winding up with their pictures on milk cartons when they stalk women and kids around real Americans; that's just Justice and Darwinism in action. And any time Todd Palin wants to borrow a shovel, I've got one that he can use.

Sarah Palin vs. Jennifer Granholm

OK, this is the match-up that people in the media keep talking about. Apparently the Dems are upset because Alaska's Governor Palin is considered hot and more than a little sexy by much of America. So they're now trying to market Canadian-born Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm as an alternative.
Playboy even has a poll on it (Granholm's getting stomped) and many talking heads and snarky leftist columnists are comparing the two. Most of them, predictably, are trying to make the claim that Granholm is allegedly smarter than Governor Palin because she went to Berkeley and because Obama's considering her for a US Supreme Court slot. Of course they overlook the fact that her meteoric rise to the governorship of Michigan came about through political patronage and little else, unlike Sarah Palin's. Yes, Jenny Granholm started out as Corporation Counsel for corruption-plagued Wayne County, Michigan (think "Detroit", folks), where she was basically a lackey for Ed McNamara, the man who also made Kwame Kilpatrick Detroit's mayor before he went to jail.
Jenny rode McNamara's coattails and used his influence to become Michigan's first female Attorney general, a position in which she basically did nothing other than pose for photos and hold press conferences while dramatically shrinking that office's staff of criminal prosecutors. Using that publicity and running against a former governor that no one wanted to see back in office (Jim Blanchard, folks...Michigan's version of Jimmy Carter), She replaced outgoing conservative Governor John Engler, inheriting from him a robust state economy and bulging state coffers. (Engler had saved Michigan from Blanchard's ruinous policies just as President Reagan had saved America from Carter's. Conservatism works wherever it's allowed to be implemented, folks.)

Jenny managed to narrowly win the governorship, a feat credited in large part to Kwame Kilpatrick turning out the Detroit voters--almost all of whom vote Democrat--in record numbers. It was just enough to push her over the top even though most of the state's rural population voted against her, proving once again that "Machine" politics is effective, and usually to the detriment of everyone but the machine.

But here's the part that most people who like to compare Granholm to Governor Palin overlook:

Under Governor Palin's leadership, Alaska's economy soared, and the people in that state enjoy somme of the lowest taxes and least amount of government regulation in the country. Through Palin's negotiations with the oil companies, the average Alaskan gets over a thousand dollars a year in Permanent Fund (royalty) payments in lieu of paying a state income tax. People in Alaska are keeping their money and actually getting paid directly as the rightful beneficiaries of favorable contracts negotiated on their behalf by their governor (Palin) and other elected officials. Alaska's unemployment rate is below the national average (9.4%) at 8.0%. Michigan's--one of the lowest in the country when Governor Engler was running things just a few years ago--is now one of America's highest at 14.1%. Good job, Jenny! Just keep taxing those businesses like you've done since taking office. The revenues are just flowing in from that scheme, aren't they?

So to those who want to compare the two woman governors, it's time to put the snark aside and focus on actual records. While it may by fun and serve a political agenda to mock Governor Palin and pretend that she's some sort of hick or buffoon, all while holding Governor Granholm out as the next star child, honesty requires an evaluation of their respective accomplishments, and that evaluation is more devastating to Granholm's image than anything that Tina Fey or David Letterman could ever say. You see, the facts paint a different picture. They show us two governors, one of whom--Jenny Granholm--was handed the throne in a state that was looked upon as a model for the nation, only to tank it in her first term, all while the other governor--Sarah Palin--clawed her way to the top on her own merits by promising the voters a government based in conservative principles. Governor Palin kept those promises and her state is one of the healthiest today, in stark contrast to the formerly healthy one that Granholm rode into the ground. And it begs the question: all other things being equal, where would you rather live and who would you rather have in charge if you had a choice? People are moving to Alaska today to take advantage of the jobs and the opportunities there. I haven't heard of anyone deliberately moving to Michigan--or even staying if they could get out--for a long time.

Take a bow, Governors Palin and Granholm. Your accomplishments and your legacies speak much louder than the political hacks and the late-night talk-show fools. And when you compare those accomplishments and legacies, suddenly Governor Palin doesn't look all that dumb, nor does Governor Granholm look all that bright.

Another bad American busted

This election has seen unrivaled illegal activity in the area of suppression of public speech in support of candidates. All across the country, signs have been stolen, set afire in people's yards and shot at. In Michigan, a scumbag pizzaria owner named Diana Franzoni was offering free pizza to anyone who brought in McCain/Palin signs. People trying to peaceably express their point of view have been the victims of vandalism, threatened boycotts and other forms of serious harassment. And almost every single time, when a perpetrator can be identified, it's a Democrat like Lori Lieberman.

An Arizona State University student caught stealing campaign signs that carry political messages opposing two Democratic legislators confessed that she did so at the behest of the school's Young Democrats organization, according to a memo from the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

Lori Lieberman has yet to be arrested or charged with any crime, Tempe police said, although an investigation is ongoing.

County detective Tim Miller's memo to his superior describes how he found Lieberman removing campaign signs at the intersection of Baseline and Rural roads on Friday. She also had seven signs in the trunk of her car, Miller said.

The signs contended Sen. Meg Burton Cahill and Rep. Ed Ableser are for opening the border with Mexico. The sign maker for the Democrats' Republican challengers has posted the small red-on-white placards throughout Legislative District 17 in Tempe.

Miller said Lieberman told him she was a member of the Young Democrats and that its members had been told to collect signs.

Now, the sign maker is convinced Lieberman was acting on orders from the honorary chairman of the Arizona Young Democrats: Ableser.

"Who are they to decide who gets heard?" Jim Torgeson said. He said he wants to press charges against Lieberman, unless she reveals who told her to steal the signs.

"As with any group, you've got to hold somebody accountable," Torgeson said.

Lieberman could not be found for comment. Her profile on Classmates.com lists her as a sophomore from Las Vegas who is majoring in education.

Well I want to see Lieberman charged and convicted, hopefully of something that keeps her from getting hired as a teacher, because I don't want someone like her in a position where she can influence kids.

I'll go farther. I want all of these people identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This sort of terrorism--and that's exactly what it is--is aimed at destroying the will and ability of Americans to express their political views, and if unchecked, it may not be long before the only "approved" points of view that anyone can express will be those which are pro-Democrat. remember how all those Germans had to express love and support for Hitler or risk a trip to a concentration camp? Well if the Obamaniacs aren't checked and this behavior of theirs isn't stopped, we may see that sort of stuff here in America before long. and this, folks, is why I'm finally supporting the McCain/Palin ticket. It's because people who act like this and/or condone such acts cannot be allowed to win. People who say "God damn America" or who tried to blow up the Pentagon, they can't be allowed to win either. America-haters like Louis Farrakhan, George Soros, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Moammar Khadaffi and others--all of whom have expressed their hope that Barack Hussein Obama becomes our next President--cannot be allowed to win.

So please stand with me against all of these horrible people. Stand up for America on November 4th. Vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin as I already have done and throw it in the faces of those who would take away the voice of anyone that they can publicly identify as a non-Democrat.

And for the record, I'll condemn this type of action and call for punishment for offenders regardless of who does it or why. Freedom of Speech is paramount to our way of life, and I'll stand in support of the right of any law-abiding American to express his or her views in a peaceable manner even when I don't agree with those views.

National Rifle Association endorses Sen. McCain

In what has to give McCain a boost in a dead-heat race, the NRA has decided to endorse him in the Presidential election. Granted, McCain hasn't been stellar on our issue, especially as his votes concerning gun shows and campaign advertising have indicated, but aside from the fact that he's going to have Sarah Palin riding herd on him (she gets it on guns, 100%), he's nowhere near the absolute nightmare that Comrade Obama promises to be, especially with a gun-hating Dem Congress at his back.

Obama's history of supporting anti-gun legislation in the Illinois legislature is well-documented and beyond dispute; he has voted against gun owners time and time again. And every gun owner needs to be aware of the fact that the Democratic Party is the party that just voted in favor of a platform that promises to work for "restoration of the ban on assault-type weapons and other "reasonable regulation"..." They also call our right to own guns "subject to reasonable regulation"...and if they win this election, they get to define "reasonable". source

Remember how we got hosed under President Clinton until we gun owners took Congress away from them two years into his Presidency? It'll be worse this time around if we let Bill Ayers' buddy Obama have the keys to the White House front door.

So I'll be voting for McCain and Sarah Palin in November, if only to keep Obama's and Nancy Pelosi's hands off of the gun room safe door. And as for Lagniappe...well he has his thoughts on the matter too:
...............................................COME AND TAKE IT, SUCKA!!...............................................

Who hates Sarah Palin?

Why, it's the same elitists who look down on you and me too, of course. I found this article and while I generally don't repost such things, this one hit the issue right on the head. The people who hate Sarah Palin are basically the nasty people who hate you and me...but only behind our backs, of course.

Who Hates Sarah Palin?
By Greg Gutfeld

According to many in the media, we truly have discovered someone worse than Hitler — and it's Sarah Palin.
Head to any left-wing blog or even CNN for that matter and you'll find the zaniest of conspiracies -- froth that even a dude with rabies would find unseemly.

So how can one person create so much bile among folks who claim to be the most tolerant in the universe? I mean, liberals are the good people: They're open-minded, caring and of course, fair.

But somehow, a Republican lady in her 40s is exempt from this treatment. Perhaps, she truly is the devil in a dress, a ghoul that eats children and pollutes the planet and possibly beats Barack Obama, the patron saint of every customer buying wheat germ in bulk at GNC.

But I know the real reason why every single elitist media type is terrified of her. They've never met her. And by "her," I don't mean Sarah Palin. I mean "her", an actual normal woman with a bunch of kids, an average husband and no desire to watch "The L Word."

She's scary to these folks the way Wal-Mart is scary to them: Both are alien to someone who blogs about their chakras. They won't go there, because they've never been there.

To them, hating Sarah Palin is a symptom of larger bigotry against the rest of us, the normal. If they saw her at a party, they would wonder how she got in. She's the anti-Obama, the anti-New York Times, the anti-everything that Tim Robbins loves, which is why I love her — and you should too.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Hitler.

source

Once again, a Liberal is a person who advocates for the sort of people that they wouldn't allow to move into their neighborhood. They have no idea what "common people" are like, and they hope to hell that they never have to find out.

Now I still don't care for McCain but I've made up my mind. I'm voting for Sarah Palin just to tick these stuck-up and bitter people off.

Facts you might not have known about Sarah Palin.

Now there's a website out with all sorts of "facts" about Sarah Palin. (Thanks to Chuck Norris for bringing this to my attention.) And I'm loving this and thought I'd share some of my favorites.

1. Sarah Palin’s suit is made from 100% dead liberal skin.

2. In 2003, the US considered deploying Sarah Palin to Iraq as a 1-woman commando squad, but wanted to make it a fair fight.

3. As head of Alaska’s National Guard, Sarah Palin taught troops in a training exercise to scare a grenade into not exploding.

4. It’s not over until Sarah Palin says it’s over.

5. Sarah Palin wants to be President but is too kind to cut in front of John McCain, so now we get her for 16 yrs!

6. Sarah Palin is the reason compasses point North.

7. Sarah Palin’s enemies are automatically added to the Endangered Species List.

8. Northern Alaska is sunny half the year and dark half the year because Sarah Palin needed the reading light, then wanted a nap.

9. Sarah Palin begins every day with a moment of silence for the political enemies buried in her yard.

10. When Sarah Palin booked a flight to Europe, the French immediately surrendered.

11. Sarah Palin’s finishing move in the VP debate will be pulling Biden’s still beating heart from his chest & taking a bite.

12. Sarah Palin isn’t allowed to wield the gavel at the convention because they’re afraid she’ll use it to kill liberals.

13. Sarah Palin doesn’t need a gun to hunt. She has been known to throw a bullet through an adult bull elk.

14. Sarah Palin is the “other” whom Yoda spoke about.

15. Sarah Palin is allowed first dibs on Alaskan wolfpack kills.

16. Global Warming doesn’t kill polar bears. Sarah Palin does - usually with her bare hands.

17. Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them it’s in their interest to jump into the boat.

18. Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs.

19. Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died.

20. It’s not raining in DC. Those are God’s tears of joy that McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Did I tell you yet that I love this woman? Be afraid, Demmies... Be very, very afraid.
And here she is in Iraq...you know, that place that the Junior Senator from Illinois refuses to go? She's looking pretty comfortable with that M4 carbine. Rumor has it that every terrorist in the country took the week-end off when they heard that she was there.

On Sarah Palin

One thing that I had plenty of time to do on my way back from vacation was listen to AM talk radio. And the #1 topic without fail was Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska and John McCain's pick for Vice President.

Now I've been aware of Mrs. Palin for some time, and I always thought that she'd be a good pick. She's solid conservative, good on guns, has run both a city and America's largest state successfully, and understands major issues that I care about--environment, energy policy and the effect of big government on the lives and fortunes of taxpayers. I like her.

But what's appalling is listening to Democrats beat up on her because her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Now remember--these are the same Democrats who always told us that the personal lives of people like Bill Clinton and more recently, John Edwards, was off-limits and not our business. And these are the same Democrats who told us that the children of candidates (Chelsea "America is a racist county" Clinton and Al Gore III, pothead and soon-to-be co-star of the next Cheech and Chong movie) was also out of bounds.

But then they found out that Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant, and the knives came out. "Forget everything we ever said about family and personal lives," say the democrats. "We've got to get this woman at any cost!" And they went to town trashing this woman not based on her professional history or her views but just because her daughter is unmarried and pregnant.

Of course Barrack Obama's mother was not married to his father when she became pregnant with him, but again, the Dems say that we're not supposed to talk about that. Only the Palin daughter is fair game.

This is why I cannot be a Democrat, folks. I cannot be a hypocrite. Dems hate the rest of us because we have values and we're not like them. Then when someone makes a mistake--even if it's only a teenager--then they hate that person for no other reason than because that person is now just like them.

Well to be fair, Bristol Palin would have to abort this child or stay unmarried and go on welfare to be like the typical Democrat, but that's not in the cards. She's keeping the child and getting married to the baby's father. Maybe that's why the Dems hate this little girl so much now. By doing the right thing even after showing some bad judgment initially, she's proving that people can still take responsibility and mitigate their errors. That's got to kill the Dems who strive to convince us all that one mistake serves as a scarlet letter and damns us all to perpetual dependence on big government.

I'm not ready to vote for John McCain yet, but I'm going to support Sarah Palin, if only for having the class to rise above all of those vile, nasty, bitter and hateful Democrats...the ones who savage her for daring to be a Christian or for running for office instead of staying home to raise her kids even though Dems have always screeched that it's wrong to be forced to give up a career just to be a stay-at-home mom. And I'm going to continue to urge the few sane, moderate Democrats left (if there are any) to take their party back from the screaming, raging nutters who now control it--the ones who made sure that every single speech at the Democratic National Convention was focused on attacking and slandering McCain and the Republicans instead of telling us what if anything the Dems want to do to actually solve our problems and lead us into the future. That anger and hate served only to highlight why the current Dem leadership is even less popular with the American voters today than George Bush is. Bush has disappointed me on several levels but at least he hasn't sunk to the lows that cause almost every major Democrat to eschew discussions about policy for bitter, usually personal attacks against the people who are actually trying to lead this country, solve our energy problems and win our war.

And Sarah Palin so far refuses to sink to that level too. While Dems sit around on their hate-websites photoshopping her face onto porn and holding contests to see who can come up with the nastiest nickname for her, she's holding her course and refusing to act that childish, and America's starting to see that they're finally getting someone who is actually like the rest of us in that she's held real jobs, enjoys mainstream activities like hunting and fishing. (Hillary fans should take note: When Sarah Palin shoots a caribou she doesn't even try to make it look like a suicide.) Also as a mother of five, including a Downs Syndrome baby, Sarah Palin knows what it takes to raise a family, just like millions of other everyday Americans. I like her for those reasons, among others.

That said I've created a campaign slogan for her that she's welcome to use:

Sarah Palin. More conservative than President Bush or John McCain and a better shot than Dick Cheney!

EDITED TO ADD: If you want to see what the angry left is doing and get the real answers regarding the lies and smears that they're creating around this woman, then look no farther than